Jen's Terrible, Horrible, No good, Very bad Spa day

Ok. Almost a week later, I think I can write about this. It is honestly the single weirdest experience of my entire life.. and for those of you who know me, that's saying something, huh?? I have to say, when this was over I was so incredibly emotionally stressed and traumatized... I think I spent 2 hours in the Super Target afterwards, wandering up and down aisles looking for the groceries and items I needed. I know I walked up at least three aisles about four separate times to keep getting items I knew I needed and had forgotten. I ended the night with almost an entire bottle of wine, a great Italian dinner and a slice of lemoncello cream cake and an hour of soaking in the hot tub before I wound down enough to fall asleep. And even as I was falling asleep, my *sarcastic tone* wonderful husband was chuckling at me. I just chose to ignore him.

So anyways, here goes. The events of Saturday, June 15th.

I woke up at 0515 that morning, made Frank some breakfast, grabbed a cup of coffee, packed Frank's lunch and then took him up to the hospital for his orientation shift. I drove back to the hotel, made my own breakfast and then turn on some shows on my laptop while I cleaned up the room. We'd been in the hotel for a full week at that point and we still hadn't completely unpacked. I knew we had at least 8 weeks left to be in the room, and I was tired of feeling like we were in a hotel, and wanted a "home". So I set about to do what I could. I spent about 3 hours that morning vacuuming, scrubbing the tub, unloading boxes, organizing cabinets... I arranged with the hotel staff to take the items they provide that we didn't need (coffee maker, toaster, pots and pans, blankets and pillows) up to the front desk so we would have more space for our own items. I took a couple of the hotel provided pictures off the wall and slid them under the bed. I used the nails they'd put in the walls to hang my own pictures. I put magnets on the fridge. I mean, I worked hard to get this place organized and nice. But I realized just how much my back and neck were aching. See, I've been seeing a chiro and a MT (massage therapist) every other week, sometimes more, for over two years. By this point it'd been three weeks since I'd seen either one. I was sooooooo sore and stiff. So I texted Frank that I was really missing Sandy (my MT) and that I was tempted to find somewhere in town to go get a massage. I also mentioned that I wanted to get my nails fixed (my nails split and peel, and no amount of vitamins or special polishes have managed to stop that... so I get gel polish put on them every two weeks, which keeps them from splitting) and was considering a pedicure. My sweet, loving husband sent me back a text that said to "pamper" myself as much as I wanted. So I excitedly started doing some research. I searched Yelp, Google reviews, and Angie's list. I found the one day spa in my area that had more than 15 reviews and still maintained a 4 star rating. Just so happened to be close to my hotel.. less than a block away. So I thought that was serendipitous! I looked at their price list online, as well as the pictures they had of the spa. I got excited! The price list was really awesome... Only $35 for the gel nails and mani, $27 for the spa pedi, and $60 for an hour massage. The pictures looked amazing. I was SO excited. So I called and made an appointment. The appointment was at 1, so I left my hotel at 1215.... I wanted to grab some lunch at the Chick Fil A that is less than a quarter mile from the spa. I thought that 45 minutes would be enough time to eat and hop up. Heck, I could've walked back and forth from the spa to the CFA twice over in 45 minutes, so I thought for sure I had enough time driving. I pulled up and saw they were busy inside, so I chose the drive through. There I sat. For over 20 minutes. At 1248 I realized there wasn't going to be time to get my food, head to the spa AND eat my food. So I pulled out of line and went up to the spa. I went inside about 5 minutes early. The guy took my information, directed me to the wall of polish to choose my toes color, and then sat me in a chair and turned the water on. The hot water felt great. He asked what I wanted for my nails, and I specifically said I wanted to see their selection of OPI gel polish. He brought me over about 4 color wheels, and said they were all OPI. So I picked the color I liked! He asked me if I wanted water, soda or wine. I got a bottle of water and sat and listened to the waterfall (they have a wall in the center of the nail room that is a freeking waterfall!) while I read my book. The lady came, did my toes and massaged my feet and calves. Then someone came and tag-teamed me, doing my nails while I sat in the chair. Only complaint so far is the girl doing my name kept adjusting my chair and leaning me further back. Now, as a bigger girl, I have spent years perfecting the perfect way to sit to make myself look nicer.. you sit up straight and suck in your tummy and square your shoulders.. accentuates the positive, eliminates the negative (who recognizes that!?). Well, when they keep reclining you, a) you can't suck in, b) with my "blessed in the chest" region, you start to feel suffocated, and c) my slinky Goucho style pants were making slide out the chair. Not a bad complaint, right?? Right. The nail salon wasn't bad at all. Well, except for the fact that the guy lied to me and instead of OPI polish they used Gelish polish.... which I HATE, because it always peels off way too soon. No big. I can deal with that. So while my nails are drying the girl gives me a shoulder massage. Not bad at all, if its a showing of whats to come, I can't wait! Then she directs me to the bathroom (after two bottles of water, I needed to pee!) and tells me that "Betty" will meet me in the hallway when I'm done to set me up for the massage. So I come out, and "Betty is a little Asian lady who stands barely 4 foot tall and weighs 80 lbs fully clothed, dripping wet. I'm starting to get a little skeptical, but then again, my MT Sandy is a size 0 model.... who am I to judge? So she walks me into the "massage room". Its an esthetician room... the room they take you to for waxing. There's no massage table... its a waxing table! Ok... No big deal.. she adjusts it and pushes it closer to the wall and gives me an oversized hotel-style towel to cover with when I lay down.She  walks out, I undress and lay face down and manage to cover myself with that tiny thing... She comes in, turns on the music and then starts trying to drag that table with me on it... she's grunting and pushing and it isn't moving at all. So she sighs and goes "You stan' up. Table needs move." I looked at her like she was high.... "Um, I'm not dressed..." "Is ok, use blanket." I look around like I'm trying to find the blanket she mentioned.... and she taps the towel and indicates that that's what I'm to use. Oh, yeah.. sure... So I hold onto it and try to gracefully get up off the table... about halfway up I realize there's no way this thing is going to cover me even remotely. Not everything at least. So I've got to make a choice.... boobs or lady parts. Well, boobs can take the hit. So I attempt to cover the lower area and stand up... then she informs me I'm on the wrong side of the table, she needs to move it where I'm standing... so I have to straddle this table and climb over it. Yeah. No modesty now. I'm completely undressed, uncovered and in full light, she hasn't even dimmed the lights yet! I'm sure I was about as red as a cherry. She scoots the table against the wall and then I lay back down. Thank God, I only have to look at the floor. She finally dims the lights and starts working. Praise Jesus, she has good pressure. She's using hot stones, elbows, and fists and its starting to work... really feeling it. She works on my back for about 15-20 minutes. Then she does something off to the side (I'm face down, remember?) and then comes back to the table. She starts to hop up on the table. Still not concerned... Sandy has gotten on the table with me before to get the leverage she needs if I have a really bad knot. Then it suddenly goes down hill, rolling very fast towards a fiery crash and begins to gain momentum. She STRADDLES me. I'm talking, sits her butt on top of my butt, which by the way, is naked and uncovered!! Ok... she starts work with her elbows, and I begin to relax. Then it hits me. I'm feeling stubble on her legs, and she is waaaaay too warm to be wearing clothes. It hits me. She was wearing pants... how am I feeling stubble if she's wearing pants??

THIS CHICK HAS STRIPPED NAKED AND IS ON TOP OF ME!!!!!!

Begin freak out!! Then she starts using her knees.... rubbing lotion on my back and sliding up and down me on her knees. Remember the stubble??? It's like getting massaged with a dry loofah. I start telling myself to calm down... she probably had on mini shorts for this. Then she sits back on my butt and I realize.... I'm feeling her lady bits against my naked butt!!! As this realization hits me, she hops up. I'm thinking "Oh thank God!" and then she stands on top of me.  She begins using her heels and slides up and down my back on her feet. Then she starts on my thighs and my butt cheeks. Then my calves. Then my feet. She's using her heels to massage my feet, seriously. So weird. Then she works back up to my butt. She starts sliding up and down each cheek individually.. then at one point she's sliding down my cheeks and her toes enter my crack. Again, begin freaking out!! Holy mother trucker... Finally she climbs down and puts her pants back on and then flips me over face up. She begins working on my shoulders and neck. Remember that she's barely 4 feet tall? Yeah. My face is in the perfect position to be smothered by her barely B cup boobs. If I had breathed wrong, I'd have motorboated her!! I'm beginning to wonder if I found the only massage room in the world that time actually slows down in... Then she says time is just about up and starts doing a "scalp massage"... only it ends up with her stroking my hair going "Oh! Yor har is jus so sof and purty!"... Then her timer goes off and I think God that its over. I think the worst is over, right? She leaves, and I start to get dressed. I sit there for a minute, wondering what in the heck just happened to me. So I lean over and put my sandals on. Guess what. My toes apparently weren't completely dry, and when she was using her heels to smuch and slide down my feet, she messed up my toes!!! All smudged. I stood there for a minute.. debated crying over the toes that were so messed up. I debated asking them to fix it up. Then I realized I was absolutely crazy to consider asking them to do anything more. I collected my stuff, walked to the front and paid my total and not a penny more.. which is so incredibly unusual for me. I ALWAYS tip well.

Anyways. That's it. I completely forgot that I hadn't eaten since 7 that morning. I totally lost my appetite. Then I proceeded to wander Target for nearly two hours. I told a couple select people what happened.... and they all laughed at me! They thought it was hilarious. And now, looking back, it really is. But it so wasn't that day. It was NOT funny, it was traumatic. I will NEVER go back to that spa. I have a difficult time driving past it every day without cringing!

I'm going to try a different one next time. Praise Jesus our insurance will kick in on Monday, so I can hopefully find a decent chiropractic place to work on me.

So go ahead. Laugh at me... Laugh WITH me. Leave your comments.. I'd love to hear if you have anything as embarrassing.

Howdy, ya'll

Well, I wasn't so great with keeping up with this last month, was I? To be honest though, last month was IN-SANE for us. Frank was working his last few shifts, we were trying to pack and empty our house (which, since we're travelling for the foreseeable future, we got rid of all but a few rubbermade boxes of stuff, so the emptying was ridiculously time consuming!), my brother got married, I had a dental "emergency", we moved out of our place and in with my mom, and finally, we're here in Dallas, Texas. It's been NUTS. So naturally, blogging wasn't really up there in my priority list! But I'll recap it all for you now, so don't worry, it'll be like I blogged during the whole time! ;)

Well, the first weekend in May we had a garage sale at my brothers house, trying to make some money off what we were getting rid of instead of just donating it all to the mission. Yeah, that was a flop. The $115 we made from 7am-3pm were not worth the insane sunburn I received from it! This is 3 days later... notice how red I still am??? It was NOT fun. Decided against future garage sales. So my wonderful friend Angela got the majority of stuff that was in my house, a few people bought some of the bigger items like beds, washer/dryer, dressers, entertainment stand (with electronics) and bookshelves.... plus I sold some stuff through an online "garage sale" on Facebook, so we did make some money, but still... a ton of stuff was donated. :) 

Two weekends later was my brothers wedding. We did the rehearsal dinner on Thursday evening because of some conflicts on Friday evening, so Thursday was nuts... I did all the decorating of the church for the dinner, then had to run some errands that we needed done (since we were on a limited time frame before we moved out), plus I needed to get my eyebrows waxed for the wedding.... which turned into the little lady going "Oh honey... You need whole face done! Coarse.. ver ver coarse hars.. Lemme do this.." and me going "Um, ok?"... which was followed by a massive breakout from a reaction to the wax.. Oh well, live and learn right? So anyways, here's some pictures of my decorating:

(I'm having issues with adding pictures... bear with me! It's my first time trying this..)
Then Saturday, May 18th my brother Michael married his sweetheart, Amanda. It was a very pretty wedding. :) I'll try and add a photo here, but I don't know how well its going to streamline.. 

Well somehow that worked nicely... Hm. Oh well. Anyways, they made a handsome couple. :)

So then, after the wedding, it was "hurry hurry hurry!" to get everything packed and sold and given away so we could move in with my folks and then scrub the house from top to bottom. This is where having a large family comes in very handy. See, enter my dental emergency.. I'd been having a toothache, and I managed to get in to see the dentist before our insurance was cancelled (since Frank had already quit work), and come to find out what was just a small cavity before was now a completely eroded tooth... Not sure how that works, but you get the idea. Anyways, I had to get over to the oral surgeon to have it pulled (which is so much worse than getting it extracted, as the standing joke in my family goes!). So the day we were cleaning the house, I had a tooth pulled. And sure enough, my fears were well-founded. "Caine" drugs don't seem to work on the people in my family. Jonathan had an entire vial of lidocaine used on his hand after his chain saw incident, and he still felt every stitch that they did... Plus he and Michael both had had really bad experiences with dentists and novacaine.. So I was completely terrified that novacaine wouldn't work on me. Well, it worked mostly.... but they gave me over twice the normal amount that they give to people. Still felt the pain and my cheek never went numb. Oh, and the dentist goes "Don't worry, with as much as we gave you, you should stay numb for 3 hours or so." Hah! Less than an hour and it had all worn off. Hurt like a mother-trucker too. So here I am, gauze in place and in terrible pain, trying to clean my house. In comes the troops! Mom, Jonathan, Thomas, Evelyn, Elisabeth, and Julia all swarmed the house (Daniel stayed home to watch a baseball game.. See where I stand? lol), and then Michael called asked if Frank could play a computer game that night with him.. to which I said that he could, so long as the house was completely finished. About twenty minutes later, Michael and Amanda showed up to make sure it was finished. Hehe. :) Anyways, it all got taken care of, we finished cleaning, and I went home and collapsed into bed with pain medication. (Come to find out, I have a wisdom tooth that "could" come in over the next couple of months, as the dentist said... Only then it started coming in that weekend. More pain!)

So then, here we are. Having said our goodbyes, we made the loooong trip to Dallas... but praise the Lord, we didn't have to go the long way through Lousy-anna, and we managed to avoid all the policemen. No incidents to speak of! (We have HORRIBLE luck driving through that state.. hate it with a passion!) So we arrived at 2220 at the hotel that is going to be "home" for the next 13 weeks. A very helpful concierge loaned us a laundry cart to unload our van with because the loading carts they have seemed to have been misplaced that night.. which worked out well for us, because the laundry cart was bigger and had sides to it, so it took less time unloading. Then we spent Sunday resting and venturing out to get a feel for the area. Yesterday (Monday), Frank had computer training to do for this new job; so he spent 14 hours on the computer, not getting into bed until nearly 3 am. And then he had to wake up at 0730 to get back on the computer for a "live" audio training session with a lady (who's voice I'm hearing through his headsets). So we're both relatively exhausted. I spent yesterday doing some arranging in the room.... The kitchen area looks more like a real kitchen with my coffee pot, toaster oven, knife block, and utensil holder on the counter, plus the teapot on the stovetop. I also put up pictures... Gram Amnott is over the fridge (can't put holes in the wall) with a picture of us from Frank's pinning, a picture from our photo shoot with Jessi Field and the "hang in there" cat Gram made are on Frank's bedside table, a collage of photos from the Jessi Field shoot are on my bedside table, and our wedding picture is on the counter by the sink. We bought a mattress cover to put on the bed since it was so horribly uncomfortable, we put our own sheets on the bed and are using our own pillows, we put our own towels in the bathroom, and I put out my tart burners with some of my favorite tarts from Sea Breeze Scents and Things (check her out on Facebook!! Amazing all natural tarts) to make the room smell more like "home". Plus we went grocery shopping and have some cereal, milk, bread, juices, fruit, sodas, and some Bluebell ice cream. So its coming together. Right now I'm waiting on the clothes to finish drying in the laundry room... I hate coin laundry machines. Ugh.

So that's about it. If you made it all the way through, I'm impressed! You must be family. ;) I'll write more later this week... it'll be easier to keep up with now that I don't have anything else to do or anywhere else to be! TTFN!